If you are one of those fans who discovered the Blackhawks only in the last decade or so, you are about to enter uncharted territory.

Welcome to a month or more of games that don’t matter.

For longtime fans, games such as the 7-2 pounding the Sharks laid on the Hawks last Thursday night felt like an unpleasant but not unfamiliar flashback. If you squinted just right at your TV screen, you could almost see Alexander Karpovtsev turning the puck over in his own zone or Alex Zhamnov inexplicably wearing the captain’s “C” on his sweater.

It was a reminder of the bad old days, when almost every game — even those early in the season — was a pointless exercise, just one more step on a long march to nowhere.

The last time the Blackhawks played a truly meaningless game was April 6, 2008, the final match of the ’07-08 season in Detroit against the Red Wings. Two nights earlier, the Hawks had been eliminated from playoff contention with a 3-1 loss to the Predators at the United Center.

The Hawks finished 40-34-8 that season under coach Denis Savard, good enough for 88 points and third place in the Central Division but miles away from the first-place Wings, who led the NHL with 115 points. It was the fifth straight season the Hawks failed to make the playoffs. Still, there were signs of progress and hope everywhere you looked.

In goal, a pair of 30-somethings, Nikolai Khabibulin and Patrick Lalime, handled the bulk of the work, but 23-year-old Corey Crawford made three starts and put up strong numbers — a .929 save percentage and a 2.14 goals-against average.

The blueline crew was shaping up nicely, thanks to the emergence of 22-year-old Brent Seabrook and 24-year-old Duncan Keith as top-four quality defensemen. Dustin Byfuglien, a 22-year-old 6-foot-5 hybrid defenseman/forward, added 19 goals as well as a much-needed physical edginess. A late season call-up, 20-year-old Niklas Hjalmarsson, showed promise in his first handful of games in the league.

Up front, there was 19-year-old Patrick Kane, who racked up 21 goals and 51 assists to win the Calder Trophy as the league’s outstanding rookie. There was another 19-year-old, center Jonathan Toews, who missed 18 games but still produced 24 goals. There was 26-year-old Patrick Sharp suddenly having a breakout season and scoring 36 goals (which turned out to be a career high), a league-leading seven of them while short-handed. There was newcomer Andrew Ladd, a skillful 22-year-old winger who had already won a Cup with the Hurricanes.

“You have the talent here,” Ladd said in March 2008. “It’s going in the right direction, and I’m excited about the future of this team. It looks bright.”

Now, 10 years later, after basking in the glow of three championships, the Hawks find themselves at a crossroads. Do they take one more swing for the fences, add a few free agents and go all-in with this group of veterans? Or is it time to sweep it clean and start over, assuming that’s even possible given the team’s long-term salary commitments?

Are we seeing the signs of progress and hope we saw back in ’08, or does it look more like regression and resignation?

In recent years, March and April have been months of giddy anticipation for Hawks fans. Usually the Hawks were pretty much locked into a playoff berth by this time and merely jostling for position. A few times, they were sitting pretty at or near the top of the standings, in full glide mode, confidently gauging possible opponents for a first-round matchup.

Since Joel Quenneville took over as coach early in the 2008-09 season, the Blackhawks have never missed the playoffs. In four of those years, their postseasons were brief, ending in the first round. But this year, barring a miracle, the playoffs will go on without them from the start. The city’s hockey fans — not the diehard minority but the casual ones who compose the majority of the base — likely will not be tuning in to watch 16 teams that aren’t the Blackhawks compete in one of the greatest tournaments in all of sports.

That’s a shame, but not a surprise. Even in this Original Six city, interest in the NHL beyond the Blackhawks is minimal, as the TV ratings for the upcoming Stanley Cup playoffs unquestionably will demonstrate.

The bigger issue here lies beyond this season or postseason. Will that casual majority of fans — many of whom have known only success — still pack the United Center if and when meaningless games become the norm rather than the exception? Will they still buy the souvenir sweaters when the team inevitably falls on hard times?

We may be about to find out.

Unless GM Stan Bowman can have a much better offseason this year than last — and unless his core of highly paid players can return to form — those hard times could be arriving soon, if indeed they are not already upon us.